A wireless sensor network (WSN) may include numerous sensor nodes distributed over an area to collect information. The sensor nodes may communicate among them through a wireless channel to self-organize into a multi-hop network and forward the collected data towards a sink node. Some example sensing components may include temperature sensors, accelerometers, humidity sensors, pressure sensors, magnetic sensors, as well as chemical sensors.
Because of the difficulty to recharge or replace the battery of each sensor node in the WSN, the energy efficiency of the WSN is a major issue and power consumption is an important design factor for the WSN. Moreover, efficient design of MAC protocol is a major factor in deciding the power consumption in the WSN. Thus, an improved MAC solution is desirable in the WSN.